We’ve all been there and we’ve all done it.
Talk with anyone 25 years old or older and I guarantee it’s among the first of three (at most, three) introductory questions. You’ll offer your name, followed by some easy commentary: “Crazy night, huh?” “How do you know John/the groom/my brother?”
And, inevitably the question comes.
“What do you do?”
For some of us, the question is met with pride, or something like relief. Finally, we’re given opportunity to announce our station. You clear your throat and announce yourself the way you’ve practiced. Maybe your job title rings of prestige or respect or earning power and you’re now allowed to soak in the validation afforded by it.
And, for others, the answer comes with sheepish indifference, usually followed by some kind of qualifier. “I work in a warehouse, but I’m going to school to be a teacher” or “I’m a teacher, but I’m starting a small business.”
And so the conversation continues, starting with your job and working from there.
I do it all the time. It’s an awkward thing to ask someone about their story, about the deep stuff. So, out of comfort, I ask about the easy stuff. It sounds like I’m making conversation but what I’m really doing is sharpening my ability to stereotype (when you’re real good like me, you call it “discernment”) by measuring them against my imagination.
It’s the ultimate question in failure, and one for which a correct answer doesn’t exist. Any answer the person gives is immediately measured against our unique and distinct emotional history with that occupation. We’re asking a new person to play a mind-reading trivia game against all of our past experiences. And every assumption is never fully accurate and always fully unfair. I’m truly ashamed at the amount of times those four words have irretrievably and indiscriminately reduced a person to a position.
But, since when has the way someone converts time to money ever been a sufficient look into their lives?
The truth is, I cannot know someone by knowing their economic dynamic. The good stuff, the real stuff is the deep stuff. I don’t think you can know a heart or why it beats by knowing how it spends eight hours of the day.
“I’m a lawyer”
“I’m a teacher”
“I work in a warehouse”
“I work in a restaurant”
How disappointing it would be to realize that what you do for 8-10 hours a day has become your identity, your single identifying trait worn proudly/humbly/begrudgingly as a badge of introduction.
I think the offense goes beyond the laziness of the person asking the question; the responsibility rests on each of our shoulders. There’s a worldly systemic plague that equates “occupation” with identity. And for too long, we’ve supported the idea that our validation comes from our occupation. Our hope replaced by our business card, our mutual link to the understanding of another. We’ve traded passion for pretense.
What if we chose not to ask the question? What if we decided that the value of a person is found in his passion or in her heart. There’s too many proving this wrong. I know guys in “noble” occupations who aren’t noble people, and I know just as many who carry out mundane tasks with the heart of a warrior. I know teachers who “do it for the money,” and lawyers who wish they were teachers. The messy part is that you have to know someone to know that they aren’t the sum of their workplace responsibilities.
What if, when someone asks us “what we do” – we answered in passion, rather than position?
I’m a writer.
I’m a runner.
I’m repairing my marriage.
I serve the local homeless on the weekends.
I’m a good friend.
I’m a good dad.
It will be awkward and messy and definitely a little weird, but I’m positive it will bring relief. It won’t be easy, but the good stuff rarely is.
I’m a hope-r.
I help people heal their hearts. It’s a privilege and it’s really hard.